Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Pepe Escobar has written a good article explaining the issue of Kobanê, Kurdistan and Turkish-led Islamism, I strongly recommend reading it:

The Kobani riddle
By Pepe Escobar

The brave women of Kobani - where Syrian Kurds are desperately fighting
ISIS/ISIL/Daesh - are about to be betrayed by the "international
community". These women warriors, apart from Caliph Ibrahim's goons, are
also fighting treacherous agendas by the US, Turkey and the
administration of Iraqi Kurdistan. So what's the real deal in Kobani?

Linked in the article but very much worth a separate mention is the ideological handbook of the Kurdish Revolutionaries: Abudullah Oçalan's "Democratic Confederalism", which is surely one of the most advanced theoretical analyses of the issue of nations, the so-called "nation-state" and how it must be overcome in Communism (of the libertarian kind, naturally).

As I have mentioned several times the Kurdish revolutionaries are at the forefront of the renovation of Western* (and possibly other) Revolutionary ideals and clearly deserve our respect and attention.

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*Western understood as West Eurasian (i.e. roughly the lands West of Pakistan and North of the Sahara). I don't really care for the rusty medieval remnant of Islamo-Christian divide, which may be still somewhat noisy and painful but is a dead man walking anyhow.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

The Fascist Islamist genocidal threat is reaching the streets of the besieged town of Kobane in Western Kurdistan (formally part of the Syrian state). The city is being attacked from the South by the Nazil-like forces of the Western-organized Islamic State and cut from its only possible support via the North by the Turkish Army and Police, which do not allow Kurds to cross the artificial border line on the railroad to join the fight.

As reaction, Kurdish emigrants in Western Europe have been holding major rallies in London and La Hague, among other places. In London they occupied the largest subway station, Oxford Circus, while in La Hague they took the gates of of the Dutch Parliament. They demand decided action against the Islamic State and in support of Kurdistan.

Meanwhile in Kobane the self-defenses have declared the town military zone and asked all civilians to leave, as it is well known that the Islamic State holds a genocidal policy against all those they consider their enemies. By the moment it seems that the presence of Fascists in the streets of Kobane is limited to a few outskirts buildings but the situation is dire in any case, with US air attacks (secretly approved by Damascus) shown to be nearly useless.

In this sense Kurdish forces demand mainly one thing: good weapons that can be used against the Fascists, whose equipment is excellent thanks to Western support and the takeover of large hoards from the Iraqi Army. As we have seen in Ukraine, this kind of technical advantage may not be enough against a decided popular resistance fighting for their lives, but, while the Ukrainian Christian-Fascists have only a very weak grasp on the populace and totally plays the Western Imperial game as subordinates, the Arab Islamo-Fascists seem to have a much better organization, capable to defy established stats like Syria and Iraq and co-opt large chunks of the Sunni Arab population, including expert soldiers, while their game is blurrier: with vague pretenses of establishing a supposedly anti-Western empire but clearly historical and present day support by Western Imperialist forces.

The most obvious one is Turkey. While Saudi Arabia, the USA and even Israel now pretend to be against the Islamic State, taking some formal and even military actions against it. Turkey is clearly playing in favor of their Arab Fascist allies by blocking any possibility of support from Northern Kurdistan (under Turkish occupation).

Naturally the USA is playing with two decks here: the IS is designed to be an excuse for the Empire to intervene in Syria and Iraq, weakening the influence of Iran, Russia and China in the area. By the moment the USA has conducted some air strikes, which seem to have no or very limited impact in the developments on the ground. The situation is in nearly all aspects a repetition of the Islamist uprising in Mali, which served the USA to gain some drone bases in the region and for France to return to its traditional role of post-colonial "protector" of the African regimes.

However West Asia is by all means much more geostrategical and volatile than West Africa. And the perilous game that the Western agents are playing there will have no doubt much greater consequences for all, including Europe.

Biden speaks out

US Vice-President Joe Biden has been saying a few truths as of late, even if he had to apologize for them and some imperialist press paint him as prone to the foot-in-mouth disease. The reality is that he's saying, very mildly, what needs to be said.

He also claimed that, as it is true that they kept the border way too open in the past, now they are keeping it tightly closed. What translated to plain English means: yes, we did allow the Fascist Islamists to enter Syria and provided all kind of help to them and now we won't allow the Kurdish militias to help the defense of Kobane.

A full confession in diplomatic slang. Still Biden had to apologize, what underlines the actual role that the USA and its allies in the region are playing regarding the IS: covert support and a mere pretense of indignation, mostly oriented to gain imperialist control.

Kurdistan and the Kurdish People stand today as the main bastion of resistance against Islamism and Imperialism. But they are more than that: in the course of their struggle for self-determination, they have developed strong progressive and socialist ideals, even recently trying to overcome the burden of bourgeois nation-state cages by appealing to confederate democratic self-rule of the peoples and communities of the region.

It is not needed to mention that, among Kurds, and in spite of the deeply rooted historical burden of Muslim Patriarchy, women enjoy increasingly equal status, largely thanks to their own commitment in the guerrillas and militias that defend their country against their oppressors. Socialist ideals stand high among Kurds and definitely they hold better than anyone else the banner of Humanism in West Asia, being nearly impossible to defeat thanks to their numbers (the largest stateless nation on Earth) and the mountains that shelter them.

In this sense I can't but issue again another appeal for almost unconditional support for the Kurdish cause, because it is not different in essence to the cause of Humankind.